Personal
Personal reflections, comments about things I've been doing, etc.
Lots of Random Stuff
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 03/03/2008 - 15:03Slowly, I’m digging out of all the emails and other content that has piled up. I’m down to less than 400 unread emails in my inbox, not counting the 3000 or so that I’ve moved to folders and will probably never get around to reading. I’ve also flagged around 500 for following up. Some are email discussions that need to be had. Others are ideas worth investigating. Some are simply interesting things that I want to highlight.
So, with that, I’m going to spend a little time highlighting some of them that are out there to at least clean up my list a little.
Tom Atlee sent out an interesting email wondering what public engagement looks like to Barack Obama. I think this is a great question. With Sen. Edwards out of the race, I’m now supporting Barack Obama, in part because of the way he is encouraging public engagement. However, public engagement is about much more than people chanting “Yes we can”, or “We are all individuals”.
So, would an Obama election be a mandate for him pushing through his agenda? Would it bring about a more open government where people can see more clearly what is going on and take a more active role? Will it support a more deliberative democracy, where people can come together and develop wiser solutions to the problems our country and our world changes? Will it bring about systemic changes that will make things like deliberative democracy easier and more likely?
Natasha Chart has a blog post up on BlogsUnited entitled, Internet Marketing: They Copy Us, If They Know What's Best. I’ve scanned it, and it looks like a good starting point, especially for progressive bloggers that want to get their message out more widely.
Avery Doninger invited me to the Purple for Peace - Genocide Awareness Day. Wear purple on March 14th, to get people to think about genocide in places like Darfur.
Various people have written to me about EENR blog. Since there was a discussion about it up on MyDD, it seems like it is public now.
Sue Henshaw wrote about the CT For Lieberman statewide party meeting on March 6th at 6:30 PM at 243 Zion St.,Hartford, CT 06106.
There are plenty of other things, but the Metanomics forum in Second Life is about to start, so, I should post this as is.
Being Heard
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 03/01/2008 - 18:36A lot of my therapist friends are talking about HBO’s series, In Treatment. They argue about whether it is a realistic representation of therapy. They question whether it is misrepresenting the experience of therapy because of problems of how it was translated from the Israeli series “Be Tipul”.
The New York Times reviews the series with an article, He Listens. He Cares. He Isn’t Real. In the article, Diane O’Rourke, a medical writer from Chicago is quoted, “There is an old saying that most men would rather have you hear their story than grant their wish.”
When asked about this I responded that as a blogger, putting my story online daily, so I might not be the best person to ask this, however, I've often felt that the deepest wish that many people have is simply to be heard.
Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 03/01/2008 - 11:38Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit. March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Perhaps the ADD lion starts off by chasing the rabbit that we invoke to bring good luck at the beginning of each month, and then gets distracted by, “Oh, look, there goes a squirrel…” This gives ways for us to contemplate the Paschal Lamb.
This March starts off more a little more strangely than most after leap day. I didn’t get a chance to do anything special for leap day, but it seems like several of the mailing lists have gone berserk. On one list a person starts acting up, gets placed under moderation, complains about it on several other mailing lists and starts receiving legal threats before, hopefully, shutting up and leaving. On another list, people claiming to be Democrats start saying the most hate filled racists and xenophobic garbage I’ve heard in years, prompting me to ask, in the best imitation of our generations Joe McCarthy, “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of a Muslim organization?” On a third list about social networking, one person was wandered off on several rants that make me wonder if they are a broken Markov Chainer.
Looking forward, this will be quite the month. On Tuesday, I will be at the Second Circuit of appeals to blog about the court hearing the Avery Doninger appeal. Details can be found at Andy Thibault’s blog.
Tuesday will also be the day that voters in Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island express their opinions about whether they want judgment or someone experienced with the way things have been done for the last thirty five years answering the three A.M. phone call in the White House. When I saw the first ad in that series, I thought, “Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!”
I expect that we will finally see the old house sold this month, as well as a special event that I’m waiting for permission to blog about and some other great opportunities to talk about using online digital social media to help groups get their message out.
Surrendering my temporal able bodiedness
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 02/28/2008 - 15:11Today, I attended a session on universal design in Second Life. At the beginning, Atsuko Watanabe asked why Second Life and places in Second Life are not more accessible. She noted that in Second Life, accessibly can be added without cost, yet it is rarely added. Why is that?
“It is perfectly acceptable t have flying rabbit but an avatar in a wheelchair is not acceptable.” She went on to say, “I've often been challenged quite publicly as to why I chose too represent my self as disabled in SL”.
Possible interpretation is that SL is a mirror of the real attitudes of the inhabitants bring with them from the real world. Another interpretation is the "medical model", “that people with disabilities are broken and that they need to be fixed and in SL no one should have a disability because it is ‘Wrong’ somehow”
Atsuko Watanabe responds to that line of thinking by saying, “I'm not broken, I am proud of who I am”. Well, as a temporarily able bodied person, and an Episcopalian, I acknowledge that I am broken. My brokenness has nothing to do with any physical abilities or disabilities. It has to do with when I have not loved my neighbor as myself. To take the joke from those in wheelchairs, it is when I have appear to people in wheelchairs as just another belt buckle in the crowd.
It is in that mindset, that I entered the discussion on Orange Island about community rules in Second Life. A friend gave me a wheelchair, and I am now presenting avatar as disabled in SL. As I commented to my friend, it is my first experience surrendering my temporarily able bodiedness, so I may end up being quiet, unsure how to join in, but that may be an important part of the experience as well.
As I sit in the room, a friend teleports in and I bump into her with my wheelchair. She is a multiple stroke survivor and understands the struggles of those with disabilities better than I do. She graciously says, “hehe.. didn’t even feel it”
So, I try to listen into the discussion. At the same time, I try to write about my experiences while they are still fresh. I fail to connect with the discussion. I feel uncertain, unseen. Perhaps that is an important part of the experience. Perhaps we all need to get more in touch with the temporary nature of our able bodiedness.
R
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 02/28/2008 - 10:30The self exists at the intersection of our inner neural network and our external social network. That is a loose approximation of what Dr. Jeremy Holmes said in the opening plenary address to the 2008 American Group Psychotherapy Association's annual conference. The phrase has rattled around in my mind ever since, as I walk back and forth from my friends' house where I was staying, as I drifted off to sleep, and at other times when my mind wasn't otherwise activated. What does it mean?
I've always been interested in how artificial neural networks learn. In a simple model, input is fed in through the neural network. The inputs are multiplied by various factors until an end result is obtained. The predicted result is then compared with the actual result and changes are back propagated through the artificial neural network to adjust the factors in the network. I've often wondered if this process of back propagation could be applied to the online social networks we are in. Social networks often represent relationships as binary symmetrical values. Either two people trust each other, or they don't. Either two people are friends, or they are not. In reality, one person may trust the other more or less than they are trusted by the other. What if our online social networks gave us the ability to quantify such trusts? What if they used such information to predict friendships and ideas that would be interesting to us? What if they learned from our reaction to such predictions?
I've thought and written about this for years, but I just haven't been able to get anywhere with it. My mind wanders to Mr. Ramsey in Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse. Mr. Ramsey is a bright scholar, but he is stuck. He cannot get beyond R. These thoughts about the self existing at the intersection of our internal neural networks and our external social networks have brought back my thoughts about artificial neural networks and online social networks, but I feel stuck at R with them, along with Mr. Ramsey.
